Nothing and Nowhere
by NeonGolden
Summary: #05 Songfic: Nothing and Nowhere - Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton. SLASH! JimmyGord. Some years after the end of the game, Jimmy and Gord meet again by chance.


**86 – Nothing and Nowhere**  
Bully

_Sketch of your faces, I still don't know you are permanent  
Permanent  
You want all of the moments stolen  
Blind alleys and hallways to basements  
How're you gonna hide till you disappear?  
'Cause nothing and nowhere is golden_

_Apartments are cages, I still don't know what is permanent  
Permanent  
Maybe all my possessions were precious  
Truth is all my possessions, I somehow lost them  
Been travelling so light when we're floating by  
Seems nothing and nowhere is golden_

_Some say, "We're lost in space"  
Some say, "We're falling off the page"  
Some say, "All life is insane, but it isn't insane on paper"_

_Playgrounds are graveyards  
And all of our scars are permanent  
Permanent  
There's no placement for places  
I'll always love you, you're mine  
Numb is the new high, old memories die out  
Until nothing and nowhere is golden_

_Some say, "We always only wanna get off"  
Some say, "Our hands are much too soft"  
Some say, "All life is insane, but it isn't insane on paper"_

_Some say, "Our hair is in our eyes"  
Some say, "We're out of our little minds"  
Some say, "All life is insane, but it isn't insane on paper, to have, have . . ."  
"Have to ask" _

_Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton – Nothing and Nowhere_

I saw him again the first time in a restaurant, and that wouldn't have been weird really if it wasn't for the fact that he wasn't sitting at a table. I was there with Pete, who I hadn't even met up with once in like the last six months because I'd been so fucking busy and I guess he had as well. He's a good guy, Petey, even though he's still a bit dorky and wet. I kind of like hanging out with him because he's nowhere near as pretentious and annoying as a lot of people are. He has a good job now, something to do with stock markets, I dunno, I never figured it out properly, but he's done well with money and that, so sometimes he gives me a bit. Me, I'm a bouncer at a night club, and general body guard, because I never managed to actually get any proper qualifications. I don't blame myself for that either, if the school system had been better I could have done it because I'm not dumb. It just didn't suit me, that's all. I do alright though, the money's better than you'd think.

Anyway, I leaned over the table to Pete, and I had to look up a bit because he's actually taller than me these days, and whispered to him in my best conspiracy voice:  
"Look at the waiter."  
He looked behind me slowly, a puzzled look on his face. It took him a minute but he got it in the end, his eyes widening in surprise.  
"Is that...?"  
"I'm pretty sure. What happened to him, huh?"  
"I don't know, I haven't really heard anything about him since school."  
Yeah, school. I'd met Pete at Bullworth, the last of the depressingly large number of high schools I'd been kicked out of, and I'd met _him_ there too. We shared a couple of amateur kisses at the time, but then again, I did a whole load of kissing in that school and he wasn't really the most remarkable. I remembered him mostly as a rich jerk, all obsessed with his designer clothes and trust fund, which was why it was such a what-the-fuck moment when I saw him weaving through the tables in that restaurant with a tray of drinks balanced on one hand. He dropped the glasses off at a table a bit away from us and then came over, flicking a note pad out of his pocket and a pen from behind his ear, common as you like.  
"Want to order?" He still had his fucking stupid British accent. I figured he probably didn't even remember what his real accent was any more. Pete was just looking at him, a bit nonplussed like, so I had to do the drinks ordering. I got a beer, and I got Pete got a coke because he still doesn't drink on weekdays, fucking dork.  
"It was him, wasn't it?" Pete said as soon as he moved away again, and it totally was. He hardly looked different really, except that his clothes were less expensive looking and his face was older obviously. He still had the same big brown eyes, the lashes longer than normal for a guy and really dark like some peaceful animal. I always liked his eyes.  
"Yeah. What happened to his trust fund, you reckon?"  
"Didn't you two get together at school?" Pete ignored my question, pushed his own. He did that a lot since leaving school, his confidence wasn't so fucked I guess.  
"Not really, we made out a couple times, not for real." Not like me and Zoe. I was still mourning that little disaster.  
"You should say something." He was coming back now, a tray balanced easily on one hand like he'd been doing this sort of shit all his life. He put our glasses down carefully, but he wasn't really looking at us but back at the little swinging door that led to the kitchen where some big fat guy with a dodgy beard was watching him.  
"Hey," I said, and he turned to me almost guiltily.  
"Yes? You ready to order?"  
"You're Gord aren't you?" He backed up, the tray hanging from his fingers. There was some spilt drink on it and it dripped onto the floor.  
"I'm sorry, you have the advantage."  
"It's Jimmy Hopkins, from Bullworth. You didn't forget me did you?"  
"Shit," he said it under his breath and looking away from me for a minute but I heard him anyway. I decided not to comment. "Yeah, I remember you." He seemed at a loss, so I decided to do the talking for him.  
"What you doing working in a shithole like this? I thought you were gonna be a lawyer." Subtle, that's me. He laughed a cold, bitter little laugh, not humorous at all.  
"I ask myself that every day, Hopkins. Are you going to eat or not?"  
We ate, it wasn't bad but it wasn't nice either, fucking French food was never my thing. Pete was concerned and fidgety the whole time, I think anything that reminds him of Bullworth makes him think of that crazy fuck Gary mouldering away in the loony bin and it twists his nerves. He left early, leaving the money for the food on the table like an apology. I let him go without complaint, it was easier that way. We usually meet up once every few months and pointedly don't talk about old times because he's still recovering from all that. Me, I never much liked those days, but I'm a different person now – at least a bit – and I know myself better. So when Gord came to take the money I slipped a little bit of paper with my cell number on it into his back pocket. It made his eyes go wide, but he didn't say anything. I left him a good tip too, but it's not like it was my money.

I don't know why it surprised me when he called me up just three days later. I guess I figured it was a shot in the dark to guess he was still into guys at all – everyone was messing around like that back at school, it didn't really mean anything to most people – or that he'd be interested in meeting me. My phone rang in the middle of the night, something like one in the morning, and his voice sounded odd and muffled like maybe he was drunk or something. I wasn't that surprised.  
"Jimmy Hopkins," he drawled drawing out the vowels in my name like they were offensive. "This is you isn't it?"  
"Yeah, that's me."  
"Come for a drink with me."  
"Alright, when?" I guess I'm not good at romantic chat up; I'm straight to the point.  
"Here, now."  
"Seriously? It's one in the morning. Where are you?"  
"It's called..." he paused, said something away from the phone and then said: "Coco." Another little giggle. "I'll be at the bar, alright?" The phone clicked off. I figured, what did I have to lose? I fingered the wedding ring, redundant on my finger, and then grabbed my jacket and left. This Coco place was pretty close to the restaurant where he worked, I'd seen it before, and not far from my apartment so I just walked there. It took me twenty minutes, and when I got past the bouncer with a kind of co-worker like nod it took me another twenty to get to the damn bar because the place was so packed. Awful, bawdy electro music was playing at some stupid volume, I couldn't hear myself think. I found him half slumped on the bar table, a cocktail glass containing what looked like a Manhattan hanging in one hand. He looked totally out of it, his eyes half closed and swaying a little bit. The guy at the bar was hovering nervously near him, probably trying to make sure he didn't throw his drink all over the floor. I sat on the nasty little stool next to him and he looked at me, his eyes focusing slowly. He grinned unsteadily, a messy, careless look – the smile of someone who had long ago given up any pretence of control. I smiled grimly back at him, checking him over. He was wearing a black tank top and dark jeans which made him look – in my opinion, hot and easy, like a sort of medium grade hooker. He was swaying visibly on his high stool, so I took the glass out of his hands and finished the rest of it. He opened his mouth in protest, looking faux-crushed like a puppy I'd hit on the nose.  
"Looks to me like you had enough," I scolded, and then thinking _hell with it_ I called the barman and ordered another. We drank for a while, the two of us leaning together, but without speaking. It wasn't like there would have been any point, the volume was too high.

After a while, Gord swayed forward. His hair was still parted in the same silly prep style and it was sticking up, tickling my face as he pressed his head into my shoulder. He murmured something I didn't hear, and ran his tongue up my neck. It made me shiver, the feeling was unfamiliar these days – I couldn't remember the last time I'd got any, not for months, even maybe a whole year. How fucking depressing. I felt cheap suddenly, not a feeling I'm too familiar with. Gord had pushed himself up, his hands on my shoulders to balance himself, and he would have looked serious if there wasn't a wicked, drunken twinkle in his eye.  
"Drink that," he whispered, and somehow he managed to slur a whisper, "and we'll go."  
I drank it. We went – back to my apartment, quite unsteadily, our footsteps loud and splashing in the rain that had started while I was in the club. I remembered the image of the rain sticking his hair down to his forehead, and the way his fingers were freezing against my back as he pulled my shirt off. I remembered the feeling of his body against mine, the world spinning sickeningly and brilliantly, how _good_ he felt, how real and solid and human, not like how I'd imagined him at all. I remembered his breath hot on my neck and my ear, the way his lips tasted of vodka and he was utterly supple and easy in my arms.

When I woke up, it was still dark – or maybe it was dark again because it gets dark at like four in the winter here – and Gord was sprawled across my bed wearing only a pair of pale blue boxer shorts. He looked horribly pale, his skin pebbled with goose pimples in the cold. I tried to wrap him up in a blanket without waking him, but it didn't work. His brown eyes opened very slowly, as though he didn't want to see what was on the other side of his eyelids. I guess he saw me, and I don't know what that was like in comparison to his expectations because his face didn't give much away. He just looked at me very blankly and blew out a little breath of air from his mouth.  
"Hi there," he said, and some of the arrogance and coldness from the old days was back. Fine, I thought, I can deal with this shit just like I've dealt with it everything else my whole life.  
"Coffee?" Coffee can cure any situation.  
"Is it Italian?"  
"I don't fucking know." He looked for a moment like he would refuse it, and then his face blanked out, resigned, and he shrugged.  
"Fine."

I ran away to make some coffee, hoping in a way to get my head together a minute without him watching me, but he swung himself off my bed and followed me out. He was fucking skinny, and obviously freezing, wrapping himself up in my blankets as he walked, like a roman emperor. He examined my kitchen critically, running his fingers of the surface top like he was a connoisseur. I poured water over instant coffee and watched him until he felt my eyes on him and turned to me. There was a moment of awkwardness, but Gord brushed it off quickly, looking up at the ceiling and yawning elegantly.

"I'll have it black, thanks," he said, taking the coffee from me and breathing in the steam rising from the cup. He didn't drink any, just held it in his two hands. I led him back to the bedroom and we sat down together. I wrapped him up, disturbed by how cold he looked, and he smiled a confused little smile like he didn't have a clue what I was doing. I lay down, my head hurting from the alcohol the night before, and Gord sipped his coffee very slowly. We were silent for a while, and I hate sitting quiet like that, I've never been any good at it. So I said what was on my mind, something which maybe I should learn not to do so much.

"So, what happened to you then?"  
"Hmm?"  
"You know, your money."  
"Oh," he paused, as though searching for the right words, his expression strange and distant, as though he was trying very hard not to look bitter. "I was cut off."  
"But why?"  
"A lot of reasons. Mostly because I failed high school."

I tried to remember Bullworth at the end, right before I dropped out. I had nothing to do with the other preps, and I was so caught up in my thing with Zoe that I just wasn't interested in any of the other students. Maybe I hadn't seen him at all, after what happened with Gary.  
"When did you drop out?" I asked him, trying to sound understanding rather than just curious.

"Right after you did," he laughed quietly, but there was no real humour there. "It was your fault really, you stopped us being able to pay for our grades."  
"I didn't have anything to do with that!"

"Okay, fine. I don't really mind, don't get defensive. It's not important now anyway." He wasn't looking at me, but rather staring straight ahead at the wall across from the bed which I had decorated, in a kind of desperate attempt to make this place look like a real home, with a printed canvas picture of a Chinese landscape. It was nice, but bland and monotone, and it seemed pretty obvious to me that there were a million of these pictures in every other home across the country. It was another testament to the fact that this place, this little crappy apartment with its white walls and its pre-packaged furniture, was not really my home and never would be. I wondered if Gord could see that, as he looked with those blank, tired eyes. Probably not, probably he was deep inside his own mind, looking at his own pathetic life just as I was looking at mine.  
"After I dropped out of school, father wanted me to work in his company but I just couldn't, you know? And then he heard some stupid stories about me from Tad's father. Do you remember him?"  
I didn't, but I sort of nodded, and he wasn't looking at me anyway and carried on like he didn't care. "Fucking new money, and it was all lies, and father knew it but he just needed an excuse so he threw me out. Not a word since then..." his voice seemed to get very quiet suddenly, and as he continued I saw his shoulders hunch up as if he was trying to keep himself warm. "Not from him, not from the others. Mother sends me a letter at Christmas." I felt grossly, deeply sorry for him, and I wasn't used to that sort of feeling because most of the time I limit myself to anger or calmness or being busy. I didn't know what to do.

It only lasted for a moment. Gord Vendome, whatever he may have become, whatever he had lost, was still Gord Vendome - proud and arrogant and convinced of his own importance. He looked down at me, his face transforming almost effortlessly from the look of a kicked puppy, abandoned and lonely and desperate, to his irritating but somehow comfortingly familiar expression of the entirely unimpressed.  
"I see you've turned out just as I predicted," he said, and although it was an insult I usually would have smashed his face in for, I was stupidly glad that I didn't have to deal with his angst. I shrugged. "I guess so, it was inevitable. I'm doing okay, too."  
"Yes," just for a second it was there again, the dependency, the hopelessness, "better than me, anyway. Although at least when I sleep with men I barely know, it is not with a ring on my finger."  
I feel sudden, explosive anger rise in me, my face twisting into disgust.

"You don't know anything about that!"  
"But you are wearing a ring, so you are married."  
"No."  
"Oh," he paused, calculating. "Divorced then, or divorcing."  
"Shut up, Gord." He shrugged, and shut up, setting his empty coffee mug down on the table beside the bed. We sat in fuming silence for a few moments before it faded and I felt guilty and childish for flaring up. I was going to apologise, any time, really, but Gord said:

"I have to go to work," and swung out of the bed, finding his clothes on the floor and pulling them on. I watched him, the bones of his spine rippling under his skin as he bent down, quite unattractive really. I didn't want him to go, I wanted to keep him here and quiz him about his stupid life and find out all the gossip to tell Petey the next time I saw him, but I couldn't swallow it and actually ask him to stick around. He stood up and put his hands on his hips when he had dressed, catching my eye and sucking his cheeks in like he was thinking about what to say.  
"See you then," I said, filling the silence, blah blah blah Jimmy why don't you keep your mouth shut. "We'll get some drinks again some other time, right?"  
"Sure," he laughed, it was the first time he'd smiled this morning. "I'll see you again, Jimmy Hopkins."  
He left, without me getting up. I heard the door click shut behind him, and I stared at the empty coffee cup he had left behind him. He didn't really have any intention of seeing me ever again, and I didn't really have any need to go and search him out if he didn't want me to. I thought, 'where are me and Pete gonna go to eat now?' and fell asleep.


End file.
